Princess for a day

National Review, Sept 29, 1997 by Anthony Lejeune

LONDON 'THE spring has gone out of the year,'' said an ancient Greek general, mourning the loss of young soldiers: and that was very much the mood in London last week, most affecting, I thought, at the beginning, when the gestures were still quite spontaneous. Buckingham Palace was largely for tourists: Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana had lived, was the place for Londoners.

Television was not enough; you really had to see it for yourself -- the thousands upon thousands of flowers, the policemen gently shepherding, a few people crying, cynics astonished at their own inability to remain unmoved. In a lifetime of London occasions -- VE Day, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the ill-omened fireworks-starred night before the Prince of Wales's wedding -- I have never seen anything like it. Gazing at the widening lake of flowers, one could not but ponder the magnitude of the Palace establishment's mistake in its handling of the Diana problem. ''She is a controversial figure,'' was the best they would say about her only a few weeks ago. Some controversy! And still, now, they were getting it wrong. Incredibly, just a few hours after her death, the young princes were taken to a church service in which (presumably following consultation) Diana was not mentioned and there was a jokey sermon about the discomforts of moving house. A stiff upper lip, some argued. I was reminded of Dr. Johnson's crushing retort to a similarly banal comment: ''No, sir! Stark insensitivity.'' Each step toward the national mood -- the flag over Buckingham Palace, the Queen's return to London and her appearance on television, the walk among the crowd -- had, it seemed, to be forced out of the senior members of the royal family as the scale of what was happening became clear. The real difficulty, of course, lay in people's belief that the Queen and the Queen Mother had not liked Diana; so the Palace was trapped between charges of hypocrisy and of uncaring. The arrangements were changed repeatedly as the phenomenon grew. Did anything else happen in the world during those first few days? If so, the British people never learned of it. Almost all television and radio channels were cleared for continuous repetitive news bulletins and encomia. Gradually some other items were allowed in, with elegiac music substituted for light programs and thrillers replaced by goody-goody films such as Lassie Come Home and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. This broadcast-fascism irritated me, but most people apparently did not mind. Some, though, have been shocked by the whole orgy of mourning. They saw it as un-British, maudlin, embarrassing, even dangerous, a symbol of how the country has changed -- for the worse. The analogies which came to mind were the deaths of Eva Peron and Grace Kelly: and, although the British crowds were marvelously quiet and well conducted, they were not altogether unlike those we have watched overthrow regimes. What would have happened if Camilla Parker Bowles or, worse, the Prince's friends who had whispered against Diana, had strayed among them? Almost certainly nothing. But one sees the peril. The only anger expressed at the beginning was against the paparazzi, in which what one might call the Palace Guard -- a mingling of courtiers, decent old-fashioned loyalists, and sycophants -- eagerly joined, urging new privacy laws and curbs on the media in general. They blame the press for ever prying into the troubles of the royal marriage. They seem to have forgotten that what they called ''lying gossip'' had proved true and the official statements false; and that it was Diana herself who, as though pushing a message through the bars, revealed her plight as ''the Prisoner of Wales.'' Her relationship with the royal-watching journalists (as distinct from the paparazzi) was close and cordial: and truthfully, despite her brother's bitterness, she had more in common with the mid-market tabloids than with the stodgy Daily Telegraph. The legend they created between them is of a vulnerable young girl, whisked from the color of ordinary life into a cold grey palace, married to a man who didn't love her and then treated with callous disregard by officials and by her husband's family. Unfair? Perhaps. But she thought it true, which in a sense makes it true. The more popular she became, the more jealous the Palace Guard became: and, after the divorce, it humiliated her with petty changes of title and status. Her death has ''no constitutional significance,'' according to a constitutional expert; which is correct but absurd. While it removes any ecclesiastical objection to Charles's remarriage, it also renders such a marriage inconceivable, at least for a long while. The public would not tolerate the coronation of a Queen Camilla or her position as a stepmother to Diana's children. Although the Left is ruthlessly trying to hijack the national mood, Diana's death has sparked no republican feeling in Britain. She herself was very much a monarchist, anxious that her elder son should succeed to the Throne. If I were Col. Sapt advising a Ruritanian prince, I would urge Charles to renounce his claim and retire to Scotland with Camilla. Prince William, inheriting some of his mother's glamour and her devotees' affection, would have a special legitimacy in people's hearts. The Daily Mail (again provoking the fury of the Palace Guard) ran a front-page picture of the Prince of Wales, captioned: ''Charles Weeps Bitter Tears of Guilt.'' Does he feel guilty? Who knows? But certainly the Palace and its advisors need to think carefully about the implications of what has happened. They, ''like the base Indian, threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe''; they also roused in Diana an unconquerable enchantress. Her magic, they said, would soon fade. It didn't. And now it never will. Her life and death grew ever more extraordinary. The Fayed connection rendered everyone speechless. Inevitably, since her death, great emphasis has been laid on her ''good causes,'' but the beatification of Diana can be misleading. Of course she was compassionate and knew how to touch people, metaphorically and literally. But she could never have worked her magic if she had not been -- beautiful, yes, but also incomparably photogenic and stylishly dressed. Her strength also lay in her very public unhappiness, which made people reach out to her. By rights, the whole cast of the soap opera -- ''love rats'' included -- should have walked at her funeral. I have long believed that, far from endangering the monarchy, she saved it by making it interesting again. The Palace Guard is now urging that this process should be reversed, that the royal family should retire behind secretive walls, emerging only for official events. I doubt if such withdrawal is either possible or desirable. Do we want a monarchy which survives only by being too dull for anyone to care about? Without the media, Diana might not have been killed, but she would not have been so greatly loved. There is unlikely soon to be another Diana. Everybody agrees, although from opposite points of view, that something extraordinary has occurred which cannot be brushed aside. The Queen and those around her will have to consider the gulf which opened between the House of Windsor and its people, and they should, ideally, rethink the true nature of monarchy. It will not be easy, with the Palace Guard pulling in one direction and a vociferous legion of New Labourites, anti-traditionalists, insatiable modernizers, levelers, all the enemies of old England, pushing in the other. I only wish I were more confident that there was anyone within the Palace capable of guiding the debate.